Eric Adams get$ it!
HEART be still, New York is about to get a mayor who understands that money doesn’t grow on trees and that the rich are not evil. Eric Adams continues to distinguish himself from Mayor Putz in all the right ways. The Brooklyn Borough president won the Democratic primary by being the only candidate to make fighting the deadly crime surge the centerpiece of his campaign.
Now Adams is smashing another shibboleth of the left, one that says success should be punished and that the wealthy should be treated as banks fit to be robbed.
He started by saying in a CNBC interview that Rep. Alexandria Occasio-Cortez sent the wrong message with her “Tax The Rich” gown at the Met Gala.
New York, he said, “may have 8 million people, but 65,000 pay 51 percent of our income taxes. And if you say to those 65,000 to leave, then we’re not going to have the firefighters, the teachers, all of those basic things.”
To New York Dems and their progressive fellow travelers such as AOC, Adams is speaking a foreign language. Their central idea — that government knows best so it should get more and more of your money — has no clear limiting principle.
New York is already the nation’s tax capital, but it’s never enough. God forbid a city official should actually call for a tax cut.
Adams, who faces Republican Curtis Sliwa in the general election, is almost certain to be elected, so every comment he makes now can be read as a signal about the direction of his administration. It is a giant leap from a borough hall to City Hall, but Adams seems to be preparing himself for a fast start by targeting the problems that grew during the last two years.
Crime, for example, began a relentless climb in 2020 after the George Floyd protests and riots, and it has changed the city in fundamental ways. Random gunfire and street assaults have created wide public fear that the bad days of the ’70s and ’80s are returning.
Adams made it clear during the campaign that it wouldn’t happen on his watch. A former cop who had his battles with the NYPD, he nonetheless brings a passion and knowledge that the other candidates couldn’t match and, frankly, didn’t seem to take seriously.
Now he’s also focusing on the insanely high tax structure and the
left’s destructive attitude about other people’s money. Already his commonsense understanding about tax disincentives marks him as a rare bird in his party.
The fact that he recognizes the link between the steady stream of upper-income New Yorkers leaving the city and state and the ability to hire teachers, police officers and others for basic services provides a contrast with the typical nonsense coming from City Hall.
De Blasio, for example, said this in his 2019 State of the City speech: “Here’s the truth, brothers and sisters, there’s plenty of money in the world. Plenty of money in this city. It’s just in the wrong hands!”
Adams made an important, related point in the CNBC interview. He said the city should first cut the waste out of its budget before trying to raise taxes.
Saying, “We’re wasting tax dollars,” he added, “Let’s make sure we get our house in order through our agencies. And then let’s talk about how much we need.”
He cited the city’s budget of $98 billion, an increase of $30 billion since de Blasio took office in 2014, and asked, “How much of that are we hemorrhaging?”
It’s a great question and here’s a number that suggests the answer is huge. At $98 billion, the city budget is nearly as large as that of the entire state of Florida, which will spend $101 billion this fiscal year.
Another comparison is that New York state’s current budget is $212 billion.
Where in the hell does all the money go?
Clearly, neither the city nor the state lacks money. What they lack are disciplined and honest public servants.
Earlier, in another interview, Adams said he sees a hostile view in government toward both existing companies and entrepreneurs.
“Right now, no one wants to do business in the city,” Adams told Bloomberg Radio. “We have been defined as a business-enemy city instead of a business-friendly city.”
The odd thing is that nobody in or around government could disagree with anything he said on taxes, spending or business attitudes. Yet those problems exist
precisely because government has done nothing about them, and in fact made them worse.
That’s the legacy of the de Blasio years — almost everything got worse. In that sense, Adams will have an easy act to follow.
Hopefully, he will continue to aim high and fulfill the vision he proclaimed while primary votes were being counted. He called himself then the new “face of the Democratic Party” and vowed, “I am going to show America how to run a city.”
Godspeed to that.